CINEMA: FAQs About Time Travel

If Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel had started life as a quirky BBC TV series (Think Hitchhiker’s or Red Dwarf) it would probably have built up a massive cult following and been made into a reasonably successful movie. However, it didn’t, and the result is a film where the nerdy characters never really have enough time to grow, fill out and become substantial, while the plot (which would have even been stretched over a half hour episode) goes exceedingly saggy in the middle.

Enter our trio of sad, loser mates Ray (Chris O’Dowd), Toby (Marc Wootton) and Pete (Dean Lennox Kelly) who like nothing better than sitting in their local arguing over science fiction, black holes, the paradoxes involved when interfering with the space/time continuum and other assorted trivia. Until the day Ray makes a quick detour to the lounge bar and discovers the woman of his dreams, Cassie (Anna Faris), who informs him she is actually a time traveller repairing holes in said space/time continuum and has discovered there’s a time leak in the Gents. From hereonin Ray, Toby and Pete’s lives are literally never going to be the same again as alternative futures get played out in front of them, including one future where they are all massacred.

There’s something quaintly old-fashioned about the story, the acting and the special effects and even though one or two of the alternative future scenarios have their moments it is all a bit ploddy and Blue Peter-ish in a sticky back plastic kind of way.

At some point somebody asks: “What would Miss Marple do?” Probably dismiss it all as nonsense, have a nice cup of tea, and head home.

Dee Pilgrim

You may also like:

• CINEMA: Love In The Time Of Cholera